


Recovery

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: Partial Harmonics [3]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: M/M, kink-bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-10
Updated: 2010-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cougar is not particularly good at being the injured party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> Happens during the "breve rest" point in the last chapter of [the Quintet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/92737).

Cougar isn't the worst patient on the team. That honour (such as it is) and standing record for _awful patient_ goes to the colonel, and as yet they don't know how Aisha handles being actually hurt. But Cougar is definitely the second worst patient on the team, and by far the crankiest.

Clay just tries to pretend it didn't happen, go about his day, until the leg gives out or the concussion makes him throw up or he starts to bleed out - whatever's appropriate (and all of the above have been, at one time or another, including the last, thank you colonel from the entire team for that heart attack).

Cougar gets pissed the hell off that his body no longer does exactly what he wants it to, the way he wants it to, when he wants it to do it. That, and he knows better, considering he's usually everybody else's medic. As the one and only thing, to Jensen's knowledge, Cougar gets screamingly hypocritical about, being injured gets the great honour of turning him into (to be completely honest) the _bitchiest_ teammate possible.

Aisha absolutely included.

Worst comes to worst the colonel can order Cougar to follow doctor's orders, or the nearest equivalent - and he has. But that just ups the resentment to about the power of a billion, and Clay's specifically said he's not going to. Jensen's deferring to his judgement on that and leaving it alone: the last time Cougar got caught was before Jensen's time, before the unit existed . . . . but only just before. The colonel got him straight out of it.

Jensen'll go with Clay's take on this one. It just means for his own part, Jensen turns into the nag.

Which is why the first words out of his mouth, coming into the upstairs room they're sharing, "Seriously, Coug, if you don't start keeping your goddamn arm in the sling I am _going_ to put it in a fucking cast." Because Cougar's left the sling somewhere again (there, over on the other side of the room) and obviously just did _something_ to jar the healing arm, because he's got a nice grey tinge and a clenched jaw.

It is a tiny room, but it has two windows, which is the better end of the trade-off. They're both wide open, but it's pretty hot here, so it's easy not to read into that if you don't want to. Their stuff (such as it is, including the bits of medical supplies) is piled neatly on one side of the room, and the bed's on the other. Half the time, Jensen sleeps on the floor, because the bed isn't actually big enough and he really can sleep anywhere. Normally this is Aisha's friend Lev's son's room (and wow, is that a long chain of association), but he's gone to stay with someone else for now, because apparently Lev Ortiz will bend Heaven and Earth (and kick his son out of his own room) for Aisha al-Fadhil.

It's a funny old world. So to speak.

His threat gets Jensen a look of pure, unadulterated hatred, but there's a lot of hatred to go around when Cougar's injured so Jensen doesn't take much notice. "I am extremely serious," he adds. "This is the face of a very serious man. And once I have it on you, I'll find a pink marker and draw hearts, and possibly a pony - no," he holds up his hands as if he's been struck by a brilliant thought, "a unicorn pony. Seriously."

One point for Jensen, he thinks: the sheer ridiculous knocks the seething resentful down one notch. Which puts it at _seething_ instead of _screaming_, but improvement is improvement and Jensen'll take what he can get. So when he picks up the sling and says, again, "Seriously," and goes to help Cougar get it back settled, he only gets a sullen glare, instead of his head ripped off.

It's on the tip of his tongue to make a joke about cougars, cats, injuries and cone-collars, but he swallows it. There is a fine art to learning when your light-hearted chatter will accidentally cut too close to the bone, and Jensen's learned it.

The bruising is pretty goddamn spectacular. Cougar, having graduated from some ultimate academy of stoicism heretofore unattended by man, doesn't actually wince, ever, except at bright lights with a really amazing hangover or when Jensen's just done something genuinely stupid. But Jensen's learned to interpret the tiny muscle twitches that in lesser people would be wincing, and (settling the sling securely along Cougar's arm) that they're there tells him Cougar wasn't just using the arm, he jarred it against something.

"Soon as we can fly we're going to regroup," he says, seeing as that's why he came up in the first place, to pass on the decision. "Find some place in Montana or maybe up into Canada, until we're settled, and then hit Paris and send nice pieces of Maclean in boxes to whoever was paying him."

"It's him?" Cougar asks, looking sourly at his arm for a second.

"Yeah, I found his hidden account - I'm insulted that we cost so little, to tell you the truth."

"How much?" Cougar steps away from him to go sit on the bed and lean back.

"A hundred thousand," Jensen says, and then, at the expression on Cougar's face adds, "I _know_. Poor fucker isn't even getting well-paid for getting dismembered, it's going to be a shitty year for him." He eyes Cougar for a moment, and this time notices the bloodspots - small, granted, but still - at the bottom of his shirt. He knows his eyes narrow, because the resentful kicks back up a notch in Cougar's expression.

(It occurs to him, sometimes, that other people might not notice the difference. In times past he has, in fact, had people tell him that Cougar was unreadable. A blank slate, even. Jensen is of the opinion that these people are just crazy.)

"Lemme see the one on your side, Coug," Jensen says, in a tone of voice he's much more used to using with Bethy, or even Holly (years) before her. When Cougar goes to actually take his t-shirt off, Jensen says, "Ah - " and knows that deep inside, Cougar is chanting a long list of really, really bad words in Spanish.

Cougar takes off his hat, setting it on the floor, and lies back against the pillows instead. Which - kind of pretty much makes it clear where this is going to end up, but Jensen's _going_ to check the fucking stitches first. Jensen winds up kneeling half over Cougar, their legs interlocked, weight on one hand so he can push up Cougar's shirt with the other.

Which, as he suspected, when he peels back the gauze - "Do I even want to ask what you fucking did?" he says, genuinely exasperated - the stitches aren't his, they're Cougar's, which would be why he was using both arms, thus the entire _exchange_.

"Go to Hell," Cougar tells him, and might try to get up, but Jensen puts weight on both hands and leans up, so that he can't. And he is not joking, with the next thing he says.

"Fucking around is only going to mean you're out of commission longer," he tells Cougar, flatly. "It's not going to change anything that happened.

Cougar's eyes are one step off hostile, which is an intimidating look face nearly at face - but that one step's an important step. "I didn't fucking ask you," Cougar says, quietly.

"I'm telling you anyway," Jensen counters.

He's not particularly surprised when Cougar's answer is to take Jensen's glasses off - one handed, and slightly clumsier than usual for it - and put them aside, on top of his hat. It's sort of one of two responses at that point, the other one angrier. The other one shoving Jensen away and snarling, to be left alone to stew on whatever's in his head right now; this one to rest his good hand (actually keeping the other arm still) on the back of Jensen's neck and pull him into a kiss. Because underneath the seething, Cougar doesn't actually want to be left alone.

Normally, when someone just about got killed, it's Jensen; normally, when Jensen's just about got killed, he's actually still in decent shape and he ends up up against a wall or pinned to a mattress because Cougar gets more than mildly freaked out about losing people - at least certain people - and Cougar's way of dealing with being freaked out has a sharp edge and weight behind it.

But as much as Cougar hates the threat of losing someone, it's still the better option; he hates having to be rescued more, and this one would be worst. Jensen and Aisha were fast enough, it did mean he got out without much more than what came from the shootout, what got him caught in the first place - but that's _much_ more, and that's because the enemy was clever enough to try the drugs first, and that alone would fuck Cougar up enough. The limitations of a healing body are just that much more.

It's not like Jensen doesn't know that.

It's just not like he doesn't also know that Cougar is a _really close second_ to the colonel in Stupid about being injured. Not like he hasn't seen Cougar reinjure himself, out of pure stupid stubborn.

The kiss is long and slow and easy, if only because despite what some people would tell you, Jensen _does_ have something remotely resembling self-control. Ish. Sometimes, when he's really trying - or when the consequences are something he actually doesn't want. Stitches redone once in one day is really enough, you know? He's not in a hurry to need to do them over again.

Kissing makes talking difficult, so that he leans his weight on his left hand where it rests beside Cougar's shoulder, so he can rest his right hand really, really light on Cougar's broken arm, for the unspoken message _don't move this, idiot_, except in a nicer tone of voice, with the undertone of _in fact, don't move much at all, let me do this_.

Getting Cougar out of his shirt with his arm without a huge production is still not happening, but this would be far from the first time they got off while still mostly clothed: Jensen just pushes it up as far as it'll go, instead. The bullet-graze is just the worst of it, the only thing that needed stitches - Cougar's chest and stomach are a mess of contusions, abrasions and scrapes, one of them (Jensen hasn't asked what from) just enough to need butterfly-bandage. It pisses Jensen off; it wipes away any regret for bodies left in the bush without offering even the chance of surrender, and for the last one with Aisha's bullet in his face even after Jensen did.

Cougar's breath hitches when Jensen bends his head, slides down, presses open-mouthed kisses to every one of them - each bruise on chest and ribs, each scrape and gash. Some of them still taste of the echo of blood, scabbing newer and constantly breaking; most of them are just the feeling against mouth and tongue. And then more than the echo, when he turns to the stitches just made: alcohol, saline, blood and catgut. Cougar hisses out a breath, his hand still resting on the back of Jensen's head, until he puts pressure to pull Jensen up again, back mouth to mouth.

He can be like that, after things get close to the edge - less about sex and more about . . . something else, something Jensen doesn't like attaching words to because it makes it cheap and tacky, so he just goes with it. Nothing to fucking complain about, anyway, Cougar's mouth open against his, bodies as pressed together as they can be with Cougar's arm,  him grinding on Cougar's thigh and vice-versa. It's easy, it's slow, it's not going to break anything and (bonus in a small house when Jensen realizes he did in fact forget to even close the door) it's not even loud: Jensen's noises get swallowed, even when he comes, and Cougar never really makes much noise anyway.

After, Cougar slides closer to the wall, so Jensen can lie half along side him, half over him, without jarring his arm, and while they both ignore the need for cleanup and a change of clothes in favour of taking the moment that's more important.

"You going to be okay?" Jensen asks, a question he _won't_ ask later, wouldn't ask before, and won't follow up on. Cougar lifts the hand resting on Jensen's neck, opens it with the half-shrug, as the only answer - it's irritation, it's frustration, and it occurs to Jensen that whatever impatience Cougar's got with a healing body, it's got to be ten times worse with whatever's going on in his mind.

It takes a minute of silence before Cougar says, "Get off," and Jensen, after due consideration of a split second, decides to take it to a wild change of mood.

"What," he says, "_again_? Already? I'm good, man, but I'm - "

Laughing, Jensen narrowly avoids crushing his glasses and Cougar's hat both when Cougar pushes him out of the bed in disgust.


End file.
